Processor specs for video processing

[sdculp]

Does processor speed and/or amount of RAM directly affect the success of capturing video and burning to DVD? I am referring to such things as frame rate, dropped frames artifacting and overall general quality.

I have an 800 mhz machine with 256 meg of RAM running Windows ME. I seem to capture mpeg 2 OK using my AIW Radeon card and the file plays back OK on the computer, but the quality on the final DVD (Nero 6) is awful.

What should the computer specs be if mine are not adequate?

Stu Culp

[yoda313]

Hello,

It may be your converting. Have you authored with another program besides Nero????

Does it reencode your source mpeg2??? Is the mpeg2 in full dvd format????

What settings are you using????

A little more detail on your process should help.

I ran a wintv pvr250 on a 800mhz with no problem. It was a hardware mpeg only capture card. It made perfrect mpeg2 files. You should be able to get much better output even on a 800mhz. Especially if your mpeg2 file looks ok on the pc

Kevin

[neomaine]

sdculp,

First, yes processor speed, and to a much lesser extent, RAM will affect the capture - it has little to do with the burn process. For burning, it should give you no worse than what you see when playing it on the computer. It either burns or it doesn't. (PS: I wouldn't admit to using WinME here on the forum.... )

Second, your probably at the bare minimum for specs for capturing. If you getting no or few drop frames and clean mpeg2 playing, YOUR DOING DAMN GOOD! Though your processor is at the very low end, your RAM probably simply allows you to make sure you're not page/swapping out and have a fairly quiet system when capturing.

So, let's talk about Nero. More than likely what is happening is that Nero is RE-ENCODING your mpeg output. I'd suggest another authoring software that will take your compliant.....hang on a minute.....you didn't mention what your capturing specs are. That may be the issue....

For now, let's assume your capturing to DVD specs. I'd suggest another authoring software. Though there are many, I work with some pretty simple ones in Ulead Movie Factory 2 and TMPGenc Auther. Both will take compliant mpeg2 and author without re-encoding. I forget about TA, but UMF2 will create an ISO that you can burn directly. Here, I've used DVDDecryptor for ages with excellent results. I only use Nero for the off hand audio or MP3 CD that I don't care about.

[sdculp]

Thanks for your responses. I will try and fill you in with some of the other conditions.

I upgraded Nero 6 to the latest. I also purchased Roxio Easy Media Creator, but Roxio says it has to have Windows XP to operate. Another reason to upgrade to Windows XP, but if I do that I want to go the whole nine yards which is kind of an expensive experiment. Will do it if all else fails with my present lashup. I haven’t tried other burning software, but would like to use one which will allow menus so I can put several VHS tapes on the same DVD.

I’m using the Plextor PX-712A burner.

I’m used to the Win ME comments.  I guess I have a hangup about XP—mainly stemming from the fact that I like to run multiple copies of the OS using Partition Magic, and save copies on the second hard drive for later reloading if one blows up. This raises the devil with the Boot.ini file. Well—that’s another problem which I would like to solve sometime. Wrong topic.

I don’t know if Nero is re-encoding my source material. Don’t know how to find out. Can you help me? Nero tech support isn’t very helpful so far.

I don’t know if the mpeg2 is in full dvd format or not, and don’t know how to find out.

My capture card is an AIW Radeon—early model. I am using the “CAPTURE GUIDE - > Capturing MPEG with an ATI Card” obtained from an earlier version of this site. The basic setup parameters are 352 x 480, Interlaced, 48khz audio. I am using the capture guide as a cookbook as my depth of knowledge isn’t very great at this point.

I hope this provides enough information for further replies.

Thanks again.

Stu Culp

[neomaine]

sdculp,

You spot-on with your capture settings. Your 1/2 D1 (vs full D1 at 720x480) is just fine....though I'm curious what your bitrate is at. I'm hoping at least 3000Kbs.

However, there should be at least some setting in Nero to tell it that you have DVD compliant video and not have to re-encode.

Also wanted to mention that you seem to be confusing authoring and burning...two seperate process. Authoring is taking the mpeg2 video and wrapping menus (optional) putting it into a DVD filesystem format. The VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders (with VOB files) I mentioned earlier. The burning process takes the authored content and places them on the DVDr in a valid DVD format. Nero is simply doing both.

In fact, we're guessing that its doing an EXTRA step enconding the mpeg2 video. Probably going from 1/2 D1 (352x480) to full d1 (720x480). Like I said earlier, there must be something in the Nero software to tell it that you already have a compliant mpeg2 and not have to re-encode.

Hopefully someone more versed in Nero can help there.

[sdculp]

Her is more info:

I selected the authoring forum, because my problems seem to occur when I go through the authoring and burning process to get a final DVD. The actual capture process seems to work OK--at least when played back on the computer.

What does the “D1” mean when referring to resolution?

The ATI recording bitrate is set at 3.54 M Bit/Second max and 3.44 M Bit/Second target. The audio is 48.000 KHz, 16 Bit, Stereo. I can’t find anything in the ATI menus which state that the capture is DVD compatible. I’ve been concentrating on the ATI software because of the documentation available on this website. By the way, I’ve updated the ATI software to version 8.8.

If I go to NeroVision Express 3 for the capturing process there is a choice of recording templates: 1. DVD, which is stated as “DVD-Video compatible format”, 2. SVCD, or 3. Custom (which can be further broken down into AVI or MPEG-2. You are also offered to test the video source at all kinds of resolutions and frame rates—then it tells you which didn’t pass. I don’t know whether or not the characteristics of my machine go into what is tested or not. Interestingly, 352 x 480 is not one of them—the closest being 352 x 288 at 30.30 fps. I wonder why? 720 x 480 at 20.41 fps is offered. I don’t know what either of these mean or should be. If I record a TV show at 352 x 288 I don’t get dropped frames (they show the frames/dropped as you go) but the recorded output looks awful. If I record at 720 x 480 the recorded vs. dropped frames is pretty bad—almost 1::1, and the resultant DVD, when played, is quite jerky and, in between jerks, is about as bad as the 352 x 288.

The "bad" when captured with Nero is what I would call '"fuzzy" and the "bad" when captured with the ATI software is what I would call "Pixellated" or "artifacted" (I don't really understand the "artifacted" term.

Stu Culp

[yoda313]

Hello,

What does the “D1” mean when referring to resolution?

Here it is in the glossary of this website:

D1
A video resolution standard. In the NTSC system, "Full D1" means 720x480 pixels, and in the PAL and SECAM systems full D1 is 720x576. You also see "cropped D1", which is 704xNN, which is useful because the 8 pixels on either edge of the video frame aren't supposed to contain useful information. Therefore, some programs will prefer the cropped D1 resolution to save bandwidth. Other popular resolutions are often described in terms of D1: the SVCD resolution is 2/3 D1 (480xNN) and 352xNN is 1/2 D1. Occasionally you see SIF somewhat inaccurately described as 1/4 D1. videographica

Kevin

[sdculp]

Thanks for the info on "D1".

I take back what I just said about "fuzzy" vs. "pixellated". I just took my Nero-captured DVD downstairs and put it on the TV and I would call it "pixellated" also.

Stu Culp